Chapter 2
She was still holding the binder when she reached the north door.
Three inches of paper under her arm, and nobody stopped her, because nobody in that building was going to ask Savannah Holloway what she was carrying.
A grip held the door for her. She said thank you.
She put the binder on the passenger seat of her truck and buckled the belt across it, which was ridiculous, and she did it anyway.
Then she went back inside and played the show.
People asked her about that later. They always got a look on their face when they asked, like they were checking a story they'd heard secondhand.
Yes, she played it. She went back to the storage closet with the mirror screwed to the wall and put on the green dress and did her own eyes, because her hands were steady and there was no reason not to.
At eight o'clock she walked out into a hundred and forty industry seats and sang for fifty minutes.
She stood two feet to his left. On the second verse of "Ash Creek" he came in a half-beat early, off that same drum fill, and she hung back a hair and they landed together. Nine years had built that into her body. It happened before any part of her got a vote.
On the last chorus of "Two Chairs" he turned and sang it at her.
She looked at his top button and sang the harmony clean.
Afterward there was a photographer, and a man from the network who wanted to shake both their hands, and Bree from the label standing against a wall studying her own shoes. Deacon said they'd ride home together.
"I've got the truck," Savannah said.
"I'll leave the light on, then."
He always did. It was the one house rule they had never once discussed.
Holt Sennett caught her in the hallway by the loading dock.
He had a good coat on and a phone in each hand, and he put both away to give her his whole face, which was a thing he did and which she had always found restful until about six hours ago.
"There she is," he said. "That was a hell of a fifty minutes."
"Thanks, Holt."
"I mean it. Camera four had you the whole back half. They'll cut it that way." He touched her elbow, once, and let go. "Listen. I want to get you in the office this week. Just us. Sit down, talk about what the year looks like for you."
"What does the year look like for me?"
"That's what we'd talk about." He smiled. "There's a lot of room in this, Savannah. More than people think."
Fifteen years, and she had never once heard him say a sentence with an edge on it. That was the whole trick of the man. He said soft things in a warm voice, and somewhere three doors down, arenas got held in November.
"Was it your idea to leave me off the release," she asked, "or his?"
Holt didn't blink.
"It's a solo project," he said. "That's just what the paper says."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer I've got, hon." He picked his phones back up, both at once, and the warmth stayed on his face the entire time. "Tuesday? I'll have Marlene call you."
She said she'd think about it, and walked out through the north door.
The Harpeth House sat back off the road behind a stand of cedars, and the kitchen window was burning when she pulled in.
The house smelled like the house. That was the thing she had not braced for. Nine years of coffee and cedar and the lemon stuff the cleaner used on Thursdays, and none of it had gotten the news.
She came in the side door with the binder under her arm and set it on the granite island, square, the way you set down a thing you mean to use.
Then she ate a bowl of cereal standing at the counter, because she had not eaten since one o'clock and she was not going to do this lightheaded.
She washed the bowl. She dried it. She put it away.
She took the folded run-of-show sheet out of her back pocket and laid it beside the binder. Then she opened the binder to the loose yellow page, slid it out, and set it face down by her left hand, where she could reach it without looking.
Three things, lined up like a set list.
At eleven the gravel popped in the drive.
He came in with his hat in his hand and his jacket over his arm, and he saw the binder before he saw her.
He stopped.
"Sav."
"Version four," she said. "Where are one, two, and three?"
"Where'd you get that."
"Your dressing room. Under the newspaper." She turned it toward him and opened it flat. "Sit down."
He didn't sit. He set his hat on the counter, which was as close as he was going to come to agreeing to anything.
"I'm going to ask you some questions," she said. "You can answer them or not."
"I'd rather just talk."
"That's not on the list."
She turned to the hold sheet. Columns of arenas and dates, gray boxes and green ones, a legend along the bottom in six-point type.
"Second week of November," she read. "Fort Worth. Tulsa. Wichita. Somebody was calling buildings about you in November."
"That's Holt's office. That's what they do."
"On whose say-so?"
Deacon rubbed the back of his neck, up under the hairline.
"Mine," he said.
"Okay." She turned the page. "Production budget. Who's the designer?"
"Sav—"
"It's a question with a name for an answer."
"Corrigan," he said. "Out of Atlanta."
"We used Corrigan in Tampa. I got him that job." She turned another page. "Three buses. Crew of thirty-eight. Wade's on here, and Wade already told me to my face, so we don't have to do Wade."
"I asked Holt not to book Wade."
"Well. He booked him." She flattened the page down with her palm. "Twelve songs on the record. She's on nine."
"Sav."
"Who's on the other three?"
"Me. Just me."
"So there's not a single line on that album that came through this house."
He didn't say anything.
She looked up. Deacon had that gathering look on him, the one he wore before a hard interview, when he was picking which true thing to lead with.
"I was going to tell you this week," he said.
"Which day?"
"Savannah."
"You've got a routing binder at version four. That's four rounds of somebody printing and somebody correcting. Which day this week."
He didn't answer.
"Right," she said.
He talked for a while then, and she let him, because she wanted to hear how he'd built it.
It came out clean. That was the part that stayed with her afterward. He had been carrying it in his mouth a long time before he ever brought it into this house.
Ridgeline had come to him in the summer with numbers on a solo run.
The duo could sell three thousand seats a night.
One voice on that same marquee could sell twelve.
The label wanted a record that country radio would take without a second name slowing the format down.
Holt had spent fifteen years waiting for this exact phone call and had the whole thing framed out before Deacon ever said yes.
"It's a business decision," Deacon said. "It's a cycle. Eighteen months, and then we go back to being us."
"We."
"We. That's what I'm telling you. This isn't about us. It's a record and a tour." He put his hands flat on the island, one on each side of the binder. "Sav. Nothing happened. I never touched her."
There it was.
He laid it down the way a man lays down a card he's held all night, sure it takes the hand.
Savannah waited to see if there was anything behind it.
There wasn't. He stood with his hands on the granite and his shoulders coming down, easier now, watching her face for the place where this got simpler.
"That's not what I asked you," she said.
"I know it's not. I'm saying it because it's true, and I know what you thought when you opened that binder."
"You have no idea what I thought when I opened that binder."
She unfolded the run-of-show sheet, turned it around, and slid it across to him. He looked straight down at the notes column, because he had read a thousand of these and he knew where the ugly always got typed.
DH avail for press 6:15–6:40. Solo announce embargo lifts 3:30. SH not participating.
"That went to every department in the building at nine o'clock this morning," she said. "Catering had that. The camera guys had that. A twenty-three-year-old girl handed it to me out of a warm printer and then figured out what she'd done."
"That's a piece of paper a runner typed."
"Those are my initials in a document. Somebody decided what I was and wasn't doing today, and then went and got a coffee."
"That's Holt's office. That is not me."
"Holt works for you."
"Holt works for the project." He pushed the sheet back toward her, gentle, like he was returning something she'd dropped. "I'll call him tonight. He'll put out a correction with your name in it. First thing tomorrow. You write it, I'll sign it, however you want it worded."
"A correction."
"Yes."
"Deacon. There's nothing to correct. It's accurate."
He opened his mouth. Shut it.
"Nothing happened," he said. "I never touched her. That's the only thing that would have—"
"Twice," Savannah said.
"What?"
"You've said it twice."
She took him through it after that, one thing at a time, because she had learned years ago that he could not hear a summary. He could only hear a list.
October, she said. Five months. Tuesdays.
"You said you were writing."
"I was writing."
"You were. That part's true. You just left off who with.
" She counted it on the counter with two fingers.
"Thanksgiving at your mother's. You sat at that table and told Pearl the record was coming slow.
New Year's, you had the flu and I slept on the floor by the bed.
February, the pipes froze and we were four days in the den under every quilt in this house.
You had a co-writer and a producer and a tour that whole time, and you never once said her name in here. "
"Because it wasn't—"
"Say her name."
He looked at her.
"Out loud, in this kitchen," she said. "You've never done it. I want to know what it sounds like in this room."
"Kinsley," he said.
The refrigerator kicked on.
"There," Savannah said. "Five months late. But there it is."
He looked like he wanted credit for it.
"The six fifteen," she said. "What was that?"
"It was press."
"About what?"
He didn't answer.